from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Computers have undoubtedly changed how people live, and as computers get smaller and wearable, they'll only become more and more intertwined with our lives. And it appears that we can't leave our animal friends behind in this technological evolution. Here are just a few projects for getting other creatures addicted to gadgets.

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.

According to the document (from 2008), online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life are potentially "target-rich environments" in which suspected terrorists "hide in plain sight." (And it's not just MMOs. Xbox Live has apparently been swept up in the surveillance efforts as well.) Despite this assertion, the documents contain no evidence that any terrorists have been uncovered by agents and analysts. In fact, experts and developers of games like these have found no evidence that terrorists are using their services to communicate or recruit new members.

Once again, the efforts of the NSA and GCHQ seem to be focusing time and energy searching locations where terrorists would be least likely to be "hiding in plain sight," much in the way that grabbing data from mainstream email services and social platforms is only going to find the most amateurish of wrongdoers.

Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”

Not only is the effort highly inefficient, but it's also highly redundant. As ProPublica points out, there are so many agents from the Pentagon, CIA and FBI chasing targets in virtual worlds that a "deconfliction" group was created just to avoid online "collisions."

Blizzard, the developer behind World of Warcraft, has gone on record stating that if intelligence agencies are using the service to track terrorists, it hasn't been informed or given its permission. Microsoft and Linden Lab (Second Life's developer) declined to comment.

There may be a good reason Linden Lab isn't issuing a statement. Its former CTO is an ex-military officer with top secret clearance.

In 2007, as the NSA and other intelligence agencies were beginning to explore virtual games, NSA officials met with the chief technology officer for the manufacturer of Second Life, the San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The executive, Cory Ondrejka, was a former Navy officer who had worked at the NSA with a top-secret security clearance.

He visited the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in May 2007 to speak to staff members over a brown bag lunch, according to an internal agency announcement. “Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!” said the announcement. It added that virtual worlds gave the government the opportunity “to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without leaving U.S. soil.”

GCHQ, in particular, has used Second Life to track down a crime ring selling stolen credit card information. While the use of these games in discovering and tracking terrorists still remains largely theoretical, GCHQ found the online games did offer one benefit:

According to the minutes of a January 2009 meeting, GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers, scientists and other foreign intelligence operatives to be World of Warcraft players — potential targets for recruitment as agents.

The NSA, on the other hand, seems to have found little more than evidence that terrorism suspects are largely like non-terrorists when they play online games -- they do it for enjoyment.

One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring “continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.” In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes.

Whether or not these agencies are actually hunting down terrorists, one this is for certain: large amounts of communications are being caught in the surveillance nets.

One document says that while GCHQ was testing its ability to spy on Second Life in real time, British intelligence officers vacuumed up three days’ worth of Second Life chat, instant message and financial transaction data, totaling 176,677 lines of data, which included the content of the communications.

Not surprisingly, there's also a profit motive tied into this infiltration of online games. SAIC, a government contractor specializing in surveillance systems (and building non-functional, incredibly expensive software), may have set this online surveillance in motion back in 2007.

In one 66-page document from 2007, part of the cache released by Mr. Snowden, the contracting giant SAIC promoted its ability to support “intelligence collection in the game space,” and warned that online games could be used by militant groups to recruit followers and could provide “terrorist organizations with a powerful platform to reach core target audiences.”

ProPublica notes that there's nothing in the documents that suggests SAIC ended up with a contract (at that time) as a result of its self-promotion, but it does appear that SAIC (along with Lockheed Martin) won a multi-million dollar contract a couple of years later, shortly after it participated in a discussion about a proposed government study of the link between online and offline behavior in MMO gamers.

The question is how useful these infiltrations have been after a half-decade of use. The agencies have stated they feel these games could be used for communication and recruitment, but nothing has surfaced indicating the surveillance is effective. It largely seems to be another way to gather data, something the agencies already have too much of. If nothing else, GCHQ seems to be using it for a headhunting tool, but I'm not sure how many potential employees would be flattered to know they've been "scouted" by a questionable surveillance program. For now, it seems to be another case of the reach far exceeding the grasp, not that this lack of success ever seems to result in scaling back the "reach."

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fiat money only has value because governments have established its value by decree. And the value of currencies can be reset -- such as Brazil's cruzeiro currency when it was replaced by the Unit of Real Value (URV). Here are just a few quick links on other somewhat "temporary" currencies.

from the virtual-madness dept

Way back in 2003, we warned that Second Life's copyright policy was going to be trouble. While many people celebrated the fact that Second Life had announced that participants would "own" the copyright on any works they created within the game, we feared that this would bring real world legal disputes into a virtual world that didn't make much sense -- and in retrospect many of the problems we expected have come true, though it's been mitigated by the fact that Second Life has lost a lot of its popularity over the past few years.

That said, Eric Goldman has the details on a recent bizarre legal dispute, which is summarized by the judge in the case as follows: "The gist of the copyright dispute between the parties is whether Plaintiff's virtual horses infringe on copyrights associated with Defendant's virtual bunnies." Yeah, so you know you're in for a treat. The details are that one company, Ozimals, makes "breedable" animals within Second Life, and believed that a competing company, Amaretto Ranch Breedables, was infringing on its copyrights. Ozimals insists that it's not claiming copyright on all breedable animals, but it does believe Amaretto directly copied much of its expression. After some back and forth between the companies, Amaretto went to court to try to get a restraining order, preventing Second Life from taking down their animals via a DMCA notice from Ozimals. The court agreed, and has barred Second Life from taking down the content.

Once you get past the fact that we're arguing over copyright on virtual animals, there are a variety of other issues here, including the question of why Second Life is barred from removing this content. Second Life wasn't a party to the lawsuit. Amaretto sued Ozimals, so at best, it seems like the court should only have issued an injunction against Ozimals from filing a DMCA takedown, but Second Life should be free to do whatever it wants. As Goldman notes:

The order binding Second Life also raises some troubling First Amendment issues. Second Life has the First Amendment rights to decide what to publish and what not to publish. If Second Life decides, for whatever reason, that it wishes to kibosh Amaretto's content, it seems improper for a court to force it to do otherwise. This point is completely unaddressed in the court's opinion because Second Life wasn't a litigant and couldn't advocate for its own interests. I could see why Second Life would basically agree to something analogous to an interpleader (effectively turning over the user-vs.-user copyright dispute to the judge and agreeing to abide by the judge's instructions). However, in a quick perusal of PACER, I didn't see anything that looked like Second Life consented to be bound by the proceedings. Were Second Life to fight this order on First Amendment grounds, I think it would have some mojo in that challenge.

That said, it is interesting to see a court step in and go so strongly against the filer of a DMCA takedown notice. It's quite rare to see anyone get in trouble for filing a bogus DMCA notice, that it's nice to see at least some courts recognize this could be a problem, even if the court then directed its injunction at the wrong party.

from the ownership-society dept

For many, many years, we've discussed the problems of trying to apply real world laws to virtual worlds. The reason many real world laws are in place is to deal with the facts and limitations associated with the real world. But, when you move to a virtual world, where the actual physics (literally and figuratively) may be entirely different, real world laws might not make much sense. For example, if you "steal" a magic sword in a virtual world, is that theft? What if the point of the virtual world is to pillage and steal? Then things get troubling. Virtual worlds should be effectively separated entirely from real world laws, because the basic reasoning behind the real world laws doesn't apply in the virtual worlds -- and mixing the two only leads to problems down the road.

That's why, despite the cheering from many folks who we normally agree with, we were somewhat worried, back in 2003, when Second Life announced that it was letting people actually "own" their own virtual goods and land in Second Life. Those in favor of this seemed to think that this was better than Second Life making arbitrary decisions, but the downside was that it brought all the problems of copyright law into a virtual world where the very basis for copyright law didn't quite apply. Bringing the outside law into a virtual world just seemed like a dangerous precedent.

And, now, it looks like Second Life may be regretting that earlier decision. Apparently, it recently tried to move away from at least part of it, changing how the virtual "land" that people had bought was defined, so that it was no longer "property" owned by the users, but a "service" provided by the company, Linden Lab, that runs Second Life. In response, there's now a class action lawsuit against Linden Lab, suggesting there was some sort of bait-and-switch, in that people were told they were actually buying "property" that they would own, but with a single change to the terms of service, that property reverted back to Linden Lab. While I think the latter position is the only really legally defensible one for Linden Lab to take, it brought this on itself by thinking it should bring outside world laws of copyright and ownership into the virtual world in the first place...

from the this-doesn't-sound-right dept

I'll admit that the details on this one are a bit confusing and not explained well for those of us who don't use Second Life. But, reading through the (admittedly one-sided) documents pass along by Pixeleen Mistral, it sounds like a vigilante group within Second Life going by the name Second Life Justice League Unlimited, and which has avatars designed to look like trademarked super heroes, had a private wiki, which was leaked. The publication, the Second Life Herald, wrote about it, using information from the wiki... and the SLJLU has used a copyright claim to Typepad in an attempt to get the stories taken down. Seeing as the publication of the contents was part of a journalistic effort, it seems like a pretty clear case of fair use, and it's a bit upsetting that Typepad automatically sided with those making the copyright claim. Of course, it seems equally ironic that they would be using copyright claims to take down such content, seeing as they appear to be infringing on the trademarks of various comic book publishers.

from the trademark-abuse dept

Chalk up another victory for trademark bullying. Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, apparently just got around to registering certain Second Life trademarks, but wasted no time using them to shove around at least one site that was only helping to get more people to use Second Life. Game Politics points us to the news that the operator of the Second Life in Education Wiki was on the receiving end of a legal nastygram. This is, frankly, dumb.

The site has been around for over two years without an issue, and helps educators better understand ways to use Second Life as a tool for education. It's clearly put together outside of the auspices of Linden Lab, but is a useful tool for educators who want to use the virtual world. It's the sort of thing Linden Lab should be encouraging. No "moron in a hurry" would go to the wiki and think that it was run by Linden Lab. Linden Lab's lawyers will, of course, claim that they have to monitor uses of their marks to avoid it going generic, but that's a cop out. They do not need to go after anyone who uses the mark in any way. In a case like this, where it's clearly an educational tool, not being used to describe a different or competing platform, there's no issue. Still, the operator of the site has decided it's not worth fighting, and will be changing the name of the site and moving it to a different domain. Too bad. Another win for needless trademark bullying.

from the focus-on-your-first-life,-please dept

Back in April, we had a story about how Taser was suing Second Life's parent company Linden Lab because some users in the game had created fake Taser-like virtual stun guns. Yes, seriously. It was hard to see how Linden Lab would be responsible for the actions of its users, but Taser has a long history of being ridiculously overaggressive in trying to protect its brand. However, perhaps someone explained how unlikely its chances were in court, because the company has dropped the lawsuit. Anyone know if Taser-like devices are still around in Second Life?

from the something-for-nothing dept

There are plenty of places for people to make free VoIP calls through their PCs these days, while the cost of phone-based VoIP service keeps falling towards zero. Given this, it's a little surprising to see the companies behind some online video games and virtual worlds planning to start charging users to make in-game or in-world calls to other players and users. Apparently Second Life, Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies will soon feature paid calling plans, with the last two even letting "users talk with friends, no matter what Sony game they're playing." Wow, that's a great feature -- and one all those existing VoIP services already have, with the added benefit that they work when their friends aren't playing Sony games, too. So it's hard to imagine the benefits of integrated VoIP calls will justify their use over any of the free solutions for very many users. This sounds somewhat similar to the sort of thinking that was being tossed out by eBay when it bought Skype, talking about all the "synergies" between voice calls and eBay sales, and how the calls would be a huge boon to the company's bottom line. Those synergies, of course, never materialized for eBay. It seems likely they won't materialize for game and virtual world companies, either.

from the exactly dept

Way back in 2003, when Second Life first announced that its users owned the copyright on anything they produced in the world, we pointed out what a bad idea it was. In the early days it was cheered on, because people thought it was better than what they considered the alternative to be (i.e., Second Life creators Linden Lab owns the copyright on everything). But as I noted at the time, the problem was that putting real world copyright into a virtual world, where the fundamentals of physics are entirely different, is bound to cause problems. You have property rights in the real world to deal with the efficient allocation of scarce goods. Putting them into a world where there is no scarcity at all on those goods is backwards, and only leads to massive problems.

It's nice to find out that some folks at the EFF have come around to this viewpoint also. Michael Scott points out that Fred von Lohman recently noted at a conference that copyright in Second Life was "in some ways worse" than in the real world, noting that just posting a screenshot from within Second Life may violate many different copyrights -- unlike taking a photo on the street. And, by setting up virtual world issues to be governed by external world laws, problems are going to follow. This was a situation that from the beginning should have been dealt with in Second Life, rather than trying to apply real world laws to a world with a fundamentally different makeup.